This is a continuing series of posts on my recent findings and experiments with cholinergic urticaria. If you haven’t done so yet, you may first want to read about my brief history of hives, and also my intro of my health and eating habits.

I am still trying my best to get all of this information out as quickly as possible. So bear with me here. All of these posts I am making will soon all make sense to you, and the reason I am writing all of these background posts is because they will all connect together when I discuss my recent findings, experiment, and hypothesis.

The Dirty Little Trick My Body Has Been Playing On Me

So in my last post I was talking about how I could slam burgers, fries, ice cream, and pretty much any food I wanted. I never read a  nutrition label, and I ate what I craved without care for nutrition or anything like that. I just ate what tasted good.

I have been eating like this since I was 16-17 years old for the  most part. Even when I cut out dairy and so forth, I still ate whatever I wanted, when I wanted, and the only time I’d read a label was to see if it had milk in it.

But throughout all this, my body was hiding “the secret” I was talking about in my last post. What was it? Let me explain.

The Secret

As I mentioned in my last post, some of the bigger guys in my school could often pooch out their stomach really far. It almost looked as if they were pregnant. I always thought it was funny looking. But I couldn’t do it myself in high school. My abs were flat as a board.

It wasn’t until recently that I noticed I could do this. Especially after a meal. I could pooch my stomach way out. It was really weird because I could easily draw my stomach back in, and even flex my abs a bit (which are now not nearly as impressive as they were 10 years ago). I thought to myself, ” Wow, that is really weird how I can do that now too.”

I didn’t think twice about it at first.

One day I was bent over and looking in the mirror after a meal, and it hit me like a ton of bricks: I LOOKED PREGNANT, but not REALLY fat. Just kinda a big stomach. When I pulled my stomach in a bit, I looked fine! I mean, I was skinny by nearly all modern standards. Sure, I had a small amount of fat over my abs at this point, but not much.

This perplexed me, and I assumed that maybe I had a lot of gas in my stomach, or maybe I was just bloated from my food. So I brushed it off. After all, I couldn’t be fat! I was always skinny. I was mister abs in high school. And I could still flex my abs now and see them a little bit. My arms were defined. My legs were defined. So I couldn’t be fat. Right?

The Bombshell of My Skinny Life: My Body Was Cursed 

As I looked at my stomach some more in the mirror, and flexed it in and pushed it out, I became so intrigued by this that I decided to start googling it. So I fired up the computer, and I started searching, “Why does my stomach stick out,” and other related queries.

This is when I found out my curse. The whole time I had been slamming cheeseburgers and ice cream through the years, and laughing at how I never gain an ounce– my body was secretively doing something–it was making me fat. The joke was really on me the whole time.

But it wasn’t just the “normal” fat that you think about. Oh no. My body was much  more sinister than that. Instead, my body was storing deadly fat in a hidden place. Behind the facade of my ab muscles, and tucked away where no one can see it (not even me), my body was storing the MOST DEADLY fat you can imagine, and it was doing it all around my organs.

My friends, I had the dreaded “V” word: I had VISCERAL FAT–and LOADS of it. And I can thank my genetics, because I store fat here far faster and far more abundantly than any other area of my body. My former blessing is now my current curse.

Learning that I had visceral fat set me on a path where I would find out some shocking information. After I found out this information, and looked back at my history and hives, many things started to jump out at me. But I want to save some for the next few posts.

Stay tuned–In the next post I am going to reveal some surprising information and continue this series, and eventually I will reveal the hypothesis, experiment, and exactly what I have done to get from severe hives to sweating again…

Keep reading the next article about Visceral Fat.

This is a continuing series of posts about  my latest cholinergic urticaria improvement, and my hypothesis. If you are just reading this, you may want to start reading my brief history of CU.

In this series, I will tell you briefly about my body history, my latest hypothesis I’ve been testing, and loads of information I’ve discovered to help improve my hives significantly. Again, in order for you to see where I’m coming from, I have to lay the foundation. This way, you can know exactly what I am talking about, and how it all comes together.

A Brief Overview Of My Body & Health

I’ve always been athletically skinny. What I mean is that I was skinny, but had muscle. Kinda like your average basketball player. I was always active, and always playing sports. I loved playing baseball as a teen, and often made the “all stars.” I was pitcher by the way =).

I was also into exercise and fitness. In high school, I really got into lifting weights. I always had trouble “bulking up” though. My friends and I were really into it. We all had our own muscular features that were good. Some of my friends had great arm development. Some had huge lats (those muscles that give the ”V” shape on the back). I always had good ”abs.” That was my best feature back in the day.

In fact, my abs were really defined at that point, and I had literally almost no body fat on them. When my friends would look at my abs, they would  lift up their shirt and say the old joke, “I can do better than your 6-pack…I’ve got a keg.” Then they would pooch out their stomach really big.

I was always  perplexed by that, because I couldn’t do it! If I exhaled and pushed as far as I could, my stomach wouldn’t budge. It was just flat as a board, and when I flexed, you could see nearly every muscle.

My Bodybuilding Aspirations

After my hives went away the first time (in that 2-3 year time period), my life returned to normal. I was in good shape, but I always wanted to be able to really “bulk up.” I wanted big muscles, not just skinny athletic muscles. But I always struggled to do this.

Don’t get me wrong–I didn’t want to look like today’s professional bodybuilders. These guys look hideous! They look like steroid/HGH freaks, and in my opinion, that is NOT appealing at all. Instead, I wanted bulky, but nice looking defined muscle. Like the bodybuilders back in the day, or like many male models these days.

So I finally got serious about bulking up during my hive free time period. I invested a few hundred dollars in some equipment, and I went to work. I made some great gains in the first few months. But after about 6 months, I hit a plateau. I couldn’t gain any weight or muscle.  I started eating like crazy. Any time I could eat (even if I wasn’t hungry), I would eat. Junk food or healthy food–it didn’t matter–I ate it 24/7.

After another  month or two, I started getting discouraged with  my exercise routine, and I was in school and working (which  made it hard to work out). After intense working out for nearly 8 months (all bodybuilding–no cardio), I gave up. A few months after I quit exercising, I also moved out of my house around this time, and that is when I moved into my apartment.

Since my apartment was only a tiny 1 bedroom, I essentially had to give up exercise. I also was working part time, and going to school part time, so I was cramped on time. As I said in my previous posts, soon after my wife and I moved into our apartment, the hives and rashes started.

My Eating Habits

 As I said, I wasn’t exactly a healthy eater since my teen years. Starting around 16-17 years old,  I would buy half-gallons of rocky road ice cream, and it would be gone in 1-2 days. I would buy bags of M&M’s, and down the whole thing in a day. I guzzled down soft drinks. Slammed pizza & hamburgers, and even had contests after school with my friends at Mcdonald’s to see who could eat the most burgers. 

“Who cares?” I thought to myself. After all, I was SKINNY, and I could eat anything I wanted because I was blessed with SKINNY genetics and great abs. Ha-it was great to be me (or so I thought)! So I slammed any food I wanted. I would down some pizza with a soft drink, then snack on some ice cream, and then more ice cream later. Life was fun and delicious.

I ate this way from about 16-17 years old and up.

The Dirty Secret My Body’s Been Hiding All These Years

Little did I know–all these years my very own body contained both a blessing and curse. Up until a few weeks ago, I had only known about the “blessing” side of my body (with the exception of my hives of course).  I thought I’d been blessed with great genetics. I thought I could eat anything with no ill effects.

But behind the facade of my defined abs and athletic physique, my body had been harboring a dirty secret. My body had been hiding this secret for years and years. This secret was so subtle, that almost no one knew about it. In fact, I didn’t even know about it myself until a few weeks ago.

What was this dirty little secret? Keep reading.